Mr. James Bryce has an interesting chapter on the absence of a capital in the United States. By capital he means "a city which is not only the seat of political government, but is also by the size, wealth, and character of its population the head and centre of the country, a leading seat of commerce and industry, a reservoir of financial resources, the favoured residence of the great and powerful, the spot in which the chiefs of the learned professions are to be found, where the most potent and widely read journals are published, whither men of literary and scientific capacity are drawn." New York journalists, with a happy disregard of the historical connotation of language, are prone to speak of their city as a metropolis; but it is very evident that the most liberal interpretation of the word cannot elevate New York to the relative position of such European metropolitan cities as Paris or London. Washington, the nominal capital of the United States, is perhaps still farther from satisfying Mr. Bryce's definition. It certainly is a relatively small city, and it is not a leading seat of trade, manufacture, or finance. It is also true that its journals do not rank among the leading papers of the land; but, on the other hand, it must be remembered that every important American journal has its Washington correspondent, and that in critical times the letters of these gentlemen are of very great weight. As the seat of the Supreme Judicial Bench of the United States, it has as good a claim as any other American city to be the residence of the "chiefs of the learned professions;" and it is quite remarkable how, owing to the great national collections and departments, it has come to the front as the main focus of the scientific interests of the country. The Cosmos Club's list of members is alone sufficient to illustrate this. Its attraction to men of letters has proved less cogent; but the life of an eminent literary man of (say) New Orleans or Boston is much more likely to include a prolonged visit to Washington than to any other American city not his own. The Library of Congress alone, now magnificently housed in an elaborately decorated new building, is a strong magnet. In the same way there is a growing tendency for all who can afford it to spend at least one season in Washington. The belle of Kalamazoo or Little Rock is not satisfied till she has made her bow in Washington under the wing of her State representative, and the senator is no-wise loath to see his wife's tea-parties brightened by a bevy of the prettiest girls from his native wilds. University men throughout the Union, leaders of provincial bars, and a host of others have often occasion to visit Washington. When we add to all this the army of government employees and the cosmopolitan element of the diplomatic corps, we can easily see that, so far as "society" is concerned, Washington is more like a European capital than any other American city. Nothing is more amusing—for a short time, at least—than a round of the teas, dinners, receptions, and balls of Washington, where the American girl is seen in all her glory, with captives of every clime, from the almond-eyed Chinaman to the most faultlessly correct Piccadilly exquisite, at her dainty feet. I never saw a bevy of more beautiful women than officiated at one senatorial afternoon tea I visited; so beautiful were they as to make me entirely forget what seemed to my untutored European taste the absurdity of their wearing low-necked evening gowns while their guests sported hat and jacket and fur. The whole tone of Washington society from the President downward is one of the greatest hospitality and geniality towards strangers. The city is beautifully laid out, and its plan may be described as that of a wheel laid on a gridiron, the rectangular arrangement of the streets having superimposed on it a system of radiating avenues, lined with trees and named for the different States of the Union. The city is governed and kept admirably in order by a board of commissioners appointed by the President. The sobriquet of "City of Magnificent Distances," applied to Washington when its framework seemed unnecessarily large for its growth, is still deserved, perhaps, for the width of its streets and the spaciousness of its parks and squares. The floating white dome of the Capitol dominates the entire city, and almost every street-vista ends in an imposing public building, a mass of luxuriant greenery, or at the least a memorial statue. The little wooden houses of the coloured squatters that used to alternate freely with the statelier mansions of officialdom are now rapidly disappearing; and some, perhaps, will regret the obliteration of the element of picturesqueness suggested in the quaint contrast. The absence of the wealth-suggesting but artistically somewhat sordid accompaniments of a busy industrialism also contributes to Washington's position as one of the most singularly handsome cities on the globe. Among the other striking features of the American capital is the Washington Memorial, a huge obelisk raising its metal-tipped apex to a height of five hundred and fifty-five feet. There are those who consider this a meaningless pile of masonry; but the writer sympathises rather with the critics who find it, in its massive and heaven-reaching simplicity, a fit counterpart to the Capitol and one of the noblest monuments ever raised to mortal man. When gleaming in the westering sun, like a slender, tapering, sky-pointing finger of gold, no finer index can be imagined to direct the gazer to the record of a glorious history. Near the monument is the White House, a building which, in its modest yet adequate dimensions, embodies the democratic ideal more fitly, it may be feared, than certain other phases of the Great Republic. Without cataloguing the other public buildings of Washington, we may quit it with a glow of patriotic fervour over the fact that the Smithsonian Institute here, one of the most important scientific institutions in the world, was founded by an Englishman, who, so far as is known, never even visited the United States, but left his large fortune for "the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men," to the care of that country with whose generous and popular principles he was most in sympathy.

FOOTNOTES:

[24] This refers to 1893; things are much better now.

[25] This suggestion of topsy-turvydom in the relations of God and Mammon is much intensified when we find an apartment house like the "Osborne" towering high above the church-spire on the opposite side of the way, or see Trinity Church simply smothered by the contiguous office buildings.

[26] Compare Montgomery Schuyler's "American Architecture," an excellent though brief account and appreciation of modern American building.

[27] The position of the Metropolitan Museum of Art is so assured that in 1896 its trustees declined a bequest of 90 paintings (claiming to include specimens of Velazquez, Titian, Rubens, and other great artists), because it was hampered with the condition that it had to be accepted and exhibited en bloc.

[28] This was changed to simple English in 1898.

[29] It is to this wind, the temperature of which varies little all the year round, that San Francisco owes her wonderfully equable climate, which is never either too hot or too cold for comfortable work or play. The mean annual temperature is about 57 deg. Fahr., or rather higher than that of New York; but while the difference between the mean of the months is 40 deg. at the latter city, it is about 10 deg. only at the Golden Gate. The mean of July is about 60 deg., that of January about 50 deg.. September is a shade warmer than July. Observations extending over 30 years show that the freezing point on the one hand and 80 deg. Fahr. on the other are reached on an average only about half a dozen times a year. The hottest day of the year is more likely to occur in September than any other month.



XII

Baedekeriana

This chapter deals with subjects related to the tourist and the guidebook, and with certain points of a more personal nature connected with the preparation of "Baedeker's Handbook to the United States." Readers uninterested in topics of so practical and commonplace a character will do well to skip it altogether.

When the scheme of publishing a "Baedeker" to the United States was originally entertained, the first thought was to invite an American to write the book for us. On more mature deliberation it was, however, decided that a member of our regular staff would, perhaps, do the work equally well, inasmuch as he would combine, with actual experience in the art of guidebook making, the stranger's point of view, and thus the more acutely realise, by experiment in his own corpus vile, the points on which the ignorant European would require advice, warning, or assistance. So far as my own voice had aught to do with this decision, I have to confess that I severely grudged the interesting task to an outsider. The opportunity of making a somewhat extensive survey of the country that stood preeminently for the modern ideas of democracy and progress was a peculiarly grateful one; and I even contrived to infuse (for my own consumption) a spice of the ideal into the homely brew of the guidebook by reflecting that it would contribute (so far as it went) to that mutual knowledge, intimacy of which is perhaps all that is necessary to ensure true friendship between the two great Anglo-Saxon powers.

While thus reserving the editing of the book for one of our own household, we realised thoroughly that no approach to completeness would be attainable without the cooeperation of the Americans themselves; and I welcome this opportunity to reiterate my keen appreciation of the open-handed and open-minded way in which this was accorded. Besides the signed articles by men of letters and science in the introductory part of the handbook, I have to acknowledge thousands of other kindly offices and useful hints, many of which hardly allow themselves to be classified or defined, but all of which had their share in producing aught of good that the volume may contain. So many Americans have used their Baedekers in Europe that I found troops of ready-made sympathisers, who, half-interested, half-amused, at the attempt to Baedekerise their own continent, knew pretty well what was wanted, and were able to put me on the right track for procuring information. Indeed, the book could hardly have been written but for these innumerable streams of disinterested assistance, which enabled the writer so to economise his time as to finish his task before the part first written was entirely obsolete.

The process of change in the United States goes on so rapidly that the attempt of a guidebook to keep abreast of the times (not easy in any country) becomes almost futile. The speed with which Denver metamorphosed her outward appearance has already been commented on at page 214; and this is but one instance in a thousand. Towns spring up literally in a night. McGregor in Texas, at the junction of two new railways, had twelve houses the day after it was fixed upon as a town site, and in two months contained five hundred souls. Towns may also disappear in a night, as Johnstown (Penn.) was swept away by the bursting of a dam on May 31, 1889, or as Chicago was destroyed by the great fire of 1871. These are simply exaggerated examples of what is happening less obtrusively all the time. The means of access to points of interest are constantly changing; the rough horse-trail of to-day becomes the stage-road of to-morrow and the railway of the day after. The conservative clinging to the old, so common in Europe, has no place in the New World; an apparently infinitesimal advantage will occasion a bouleversement that is by no means infinitesimal.

Next to the interest and beauty of the places to be visited, perhaps the two things in which a visitor to a new country has most concern are the means of moving from point to point and the accommodation provided for him at his nightly stopping-places—in brief, its conveyances and its inns. During the year or more I spent in almost continuous travelling in the United States I had abundant opportunity of testing both of these. In all I must have slept in over two hundred different beds, ranging from one in a hotel-chamber so gorgeous that it seemed almost as indelicate to go to bed in it as to undress in the drawing-room, down through the berths of Pullman cars and river steamboats, to an open-air couch of balsam boughs in the Adirondack forests. My means of locomotion included a safety bicycle, an Adirondack canoe, the back of a horse, the omnipresent buggy, a bob-sleigh, a "cutter," a "booby," four-horse "stages," river, lake, and sea-going steamers, horse-cars, cable-cars, electric cars, mountain elevators, narrow-gauge railways, and the Vestibuled Limited Express from New York to Chicago.

Perhaps it is significant of the amount of truth in many of the assertions made about travelling in the United States that I traversed about 35,000 miles in the various ways indicated above without a scratch and almost without serious detention or delay. Once we were nearly swamped in a sudden squall in a mountain lake, and once we had a minute or two's pleasant experience of the iron-shod heels of our horse inside the buggy, the unfortunate animal having hitched his hind-legs over the dash-board and nearly kicking out our brains in his frantic efforts to get free. These, however, were accidents that might have happened anywhere, and if my experiences by road and rail in America prove anything, they prove that travelling in the United States is just as safe as in Europe.[30] Some varieties of it are rougher than anything of the kind I know in the Old World; but on the other hand much of it is far pleasanter. The European system of small railway compartments, in spite of its advantage of privacy and quiet, would be simply unendurable in the long journeys that have to be made in the western hemisphere. The journey of twenty-four to thirty hours from New York to Chicago, if made by the Vestibuled Limited, is probably less fatiguing than the day-journey of half the time from London to Edinburgh. The comforts of this superb train include those of the drawing-room, the dining-room, the smoking-room, and the library. These apartments are perfectly ventilated by compressed air and lighted by movable electric lights, while in winter they are warmed to an agreeable temperature by steam-pipes. Card-tables and a selection of the daily papers minister to the traveller's amusement, while bulletin boards give the latest Stock Exchange quotations and the reports of the Government Weather Bureau. Those who desire it may enjoy a bath en route, or avail themselves of the services of a lady's maid, a barber, a stenographer, and a type-writer. There is even a small and carefully selected medicine chest within reach; and the way in which the minor delicacies of life are consulted may be illustrated by the fact that powdered soap is provided in the lavatories, so that no one may have to use the same cake of soap as his neighbour.

No one who has not tried both can appreciate the immense difference in comfort given by the opportunity to move about in the train. No matter how pleasant one's companions are in an English first-class compartment, their enforced proximity makes one heartily sick of them before many hours have elapsed; while a conversation with Daisy Miller in the American parlour car is rendered doubly delightful by the consciousness that you may at any moment transfer yourself and your bons mots to Lydia Blood at the other end of the car, or retire with Gilead P. Beck to the snug little smoking-room. The great size and weight of the American cars make them very steady on well-laid tracks like those of the Pennsylvania Railway, and thus letter-writing need not be a lost art on a railway journey. Even when the permanent way is inferior, the same cause often makes the vibration less than on the admirable road-beds of England.

Theoretically, there is no distinction of classes on an American railway; practically, there is whenever the line is important enough or the journey long enough to make it worth while. The parlour car corresponds to our first class; and its use has this advantage (rather curious in a democratic country), that the increased fare for its admirable comforts is relatively very low, usually (in my experience) not exceeding 1/2d. a mile. The ordinary fare from New York to Boston (220 to 250 miles) is $5 (L1); a seat in a parlour car costs $1 (4s.), and a sleeping-berth $1.50 (6s.). Thus the ordinary passenger pays at the rate of about 1-1/4d. per mile, while the luxury of the Pullman may be obtained for an additional expenditure of just about 1/2d. a mile. The extra fare on even the Chicago Vestibuled Limited is only $8 (32s.) for 912 miles, or considerably less than 1/2d. a mile. These rates are not only less than the difference between first-class and third-class fares in Europe, but also compare very advantageously with the rates for sleeping-berths on European lines, being usually 50 to 75 per cent. lower. The parlour-car rates, however, increase considerably as we go on towards the West and get into regions where competition is less active. A good instance of this is afforded by the parlour-car fares of the Canadian Pacific Railway, which I select because it spans the continent with its own rails from the Atlantic to the Pacific; the principle on the United States lines is similar. The price of a "sleeper" ticket from Montreal to Fort William (998 miles) is $6, or about 3/5d. per mile; that from Banff to Vancouver (560 miles) is the same, or at the rate of about 14/15d. per mile. The rate for the whole journey from Halifax to Vancouver (3,362 miles) is about 2/3d. per mile.

Travellers who prefer the privacy of the European system may combine it with the liberty of the American system by hiring, at a small extra rate, the so-called "drawing-room" or "state-room," a small compartment containing four seats or berths, divided by partitions from the rest of the parlour car. The ordinary carriage or "day coach" corresponds to the English second-class carriage, or, rather, to the excellent third-class carriages on such railways as the Midland. It does not, I think, excel them in comfort except in the greater size, the greater liberty of motion, and the element of variety afforded by the greater number of fellow-passengers. The seats are disposed on each side of a narrow central aisle, and are so arranged that the occupants can ride forward or backward as they prefer. Each seat holds two persons, but with some difficulty if either has any amplitude of bulk. The space for the legs is also very limited. The chief discomfort, however, is the fact that there is no support for the head and shoulders, though this disability might be easily remedied by a movable head-rest. Very little provision is made for hand luggage, the American custom being to "check" anything checkable and have it put in the "baggage car." Rugs are entirely superfluous, as the cars are far more likely to be too warm than too cold. The windows are usually another weak point. They move vertically as ours do, but up instead of down; and they are frequently made so that they cannot be opened more than a few inches. The handles by which they are lifted are very small, and afford very little purchase; and the windows are frequently so stiff that it requires a strong man to move them. I have often seen half a dozen passengers struggle in vain with a refractory glass, and finally have to call in the help of the brawny brakeman. This difficulty, however, is of less consequence from the fact that even if you can open your window, there is sure to be some one among your forty or fifty fellow-passengers who objects to the draught. Or if you object to the draught of a window in front of you, you have either to grin and bear it or do violence to your British diffidence in requesting its closure. The windows are all furnished with small slatted blinds, which can be arranged in hot weather so as to exclude the sun and let in the air. The conductor communicates with the engine-driver by a bell-cord suspended from the roof of the carriages and running throughout the entire length of the train. It is well to remember that this tempting clothes-rope is not meant for hanging up one's overcoat. Whatever be the reason, the plague of cinders from the locomotive smoke is often much worse in America than in England. As we proceed, they patter on the roof like hailstones, in a way that is often very trying to the nerves, and they not unfrequently make open windows a doubtful blessing, even on immoderately warm days. At intervals the brakeman carries round a pitcher of iced water, which he serves gratis to all who want it; and it is a pleasant sight on sultry summer days to see how the children welcome his coming. In some cases there is a permanent filter of ice-water with a tap in a corner of the car. At each end of the car is a lavatory, one for men and one for women. In spite, then, of the discomforts noted above, it may be asserted that the poor man is more comfortable on a long journey than in Europe; and that on a short journey the American system affords more entertainment than the European. When Richard Grant White announced his preference for the English system because it preserves the traveller's individuality, looks after his personal comfort, and carries all his baggage, he must have forgotten that it is practically first-class passengers only who reap the benefit of those advantages.

One most unpleasantly suggestive equipment of an American railway carriage is the axe and crowbar suspended on the wall for use in an accident. This makes one reflect that there are only two doors in an American car containing sixty people, whereas the same number of passengers in Europe would have six, eight, or even ten. This is extremely inconvenient in crowded trains (e.g., in the New York Elevated), and might conceivably add immensely to the horrors of an accident. The latter reflection is emphasised by the fact that there are practically no soft places to fall on, sharp angles presenting themselves on every side, and the very arm-rests of the seats being made of polished iron.

There is always a smoking-car attached to the train, generally immediately after the locomotive or luggage van. Labourers in their working clothes and the shabbily clad in general are apt to select this car, which thus practically takes the place of third-class carriages on European railways. On the long-distance trains running to the West there are emigrant cars which also represent our third-class cars, while the same function is performed in the South by the cars reserved for coloured passengers. In a few instances the trains are made up of first-class and second-class carriages actually so named. A "first-class ticket," however, in ordinary language means one for the universal day-coach as above described.

The ticket system differs somewhat from that in vogue in Europe, and rather curious developments have been the result. For short journeys the ticket often resembles the small oblong of pasteboard with which we are all familiar. For longer journeys it consists of a narrow strip of coupons, sometimes nearly two feet in length. If this is "unlimited" it is available at any time until used, and the holder may "stop over" at any intermediate station. The "limited" and cheaper ticket is available for a continuous passage only, and does not allow of any stoppages en route. The coupons are collected in the cars by the conductors in charge of the various sections of the line. The skill shown by these officials, passing through a long and crowded train after a stoppage, in recognising the newcomers and asking for their tickets, is often very remarkable. Sometimes the conductor gives a coloured counter-check to enable him to recognise the sheep whom he has already shorn. These checks are generally placed in the hat-band or stuck in the back of the seat. The conductor collects them just before he hands over the train to the charge of his successor. As many complaints are made by English travellers of the incivility of American conductors, I may say that the first conductor I met found me, when he was on his rounds to collect his counter-checks, lolling back on my seat, with my hat high above me in the rack. I made a motion as if to get up for it, when he said, "Pray don't disturb yourself, sir; I'll reach up for it." Not all the conductors I met afterwards were as polite as this, but he has as good a right to pose as the type of American conductor as the overbearing ruffians who stalk through the books of sundry British tourists. In judging him it should be remembered that he democratically feels himself on a level with his passengers, that he would be insulted by the offer of a tip, that he is harassed all day long by hundreds of foolish questions from foolish travellers, that he has a great deal to do in a limited time, and that however "short" he may be with a male passenger he is almost invariably courteous and considerate to the unprotected female. Though his address may sometimes sound rather familiar, he means no disrespect; and if he takes a fancy to you and offers you a cigar, you need not feel insulted, and will probably find he smokes a better brand than your own.

A feature connected with the American railway system that should not be overlooked is the mass of literature prepared by the railway companies and distributed gratis to their passengers. The illustrated pamphlets issued by the larger companies are marvels of paper and typography, with really charming illustrations and a text that is often clever and witty enough to suggest that authors of repute are sometimes tempted to lend their anonymous pens for this kind of work. But even the tiniest little "one-horse" railway distributes neat little "folders," showing conclusively that its tracks lead through the Elysian Fields and end at the Garden of Eden. A conspicuous feature in all hotel offices is a large rack containing packages of these gaily coloured folders, contributed by perhaps fifty different railways for the use of the hotel guests.

Owing to the unlimited time for which tickets are available, and to other causes, a race of dealers in railway tickets has sprung up, who rejoice in the euphonious name of "scalpers," and often do a roaring trade in selling tickets at less than regular fares. Thus, if the fare from A to B be $10 and the return fare $15, it is often possible to obtain the half of a return ticket from a scalper for about $8. Or a man setting out for a journey of 100 miles buys a through ticket to the terminus of the line, which may be 400 miles distant. On this through ticket he pays a proportionally lower rate for the distance he actually travels, and sells the balance of his ticket to a scalper. Or if a man wishes to go from A to B and finds that a special excursion ticket there and back is being sold at a single fare ($10), he may use the half of this ticket and sell the other half to a scalper in B. It is obvious that anything he can get for it will be a gain to him, while the scalper could afford to give up to about $7 for it, though he probably will not give more than $4. The profession of scalper may, however, very probably prove an evanescent one, as vigorous efforts are being made to suppress him by legislative enactment.

Americans often claim that the ordinary railway-fare in the United States is less than in England, amounting only to 2 cents (1d.) per mile. My experience, however, leads me to say that this assertion cannot be accepted without considerable deduction. It is true that in many States (including all the Eastern ones) there is a statutory fare of 2 cents per mile, but this (so far as I know) is not always granted for ordinary single or double tickets, but only on season, "commutation," or mileage tickets. The "commutation" tickets are good for a certain number of trips. The mileage tickets are books of small coupons, each of which represents a mile; the conductor tears out as many coupons as the passenger has travelled miles. This mileage system is an extremely convenient one for (say) a family, as the books are good until exhausted, and the coupons are available on any train (with possibly one or two exceptions) on any part of the system of the company issuing the ticket. Which of our enlightened British companies is going to be the first to win the hearts of its patrons by the adoption of this neat and easy device? Out West and down South the fares for ordinary tickets purchased at the station are often much higher than 2 cents a mile; on one short and very inferior line I traversed the rate was 7 cents (3-1/2d.) per mile. I find that Mr. W.M. Acworth calculates the average fare in the United States as 1-1/4d. per mile as against 1-1/6d. in Great Britain. Professor Hadley, an American authority, gives the rates as 2.35 cents and 2 cents respectively.

British critics would, perhaps, be more lenient in their animadversions on American railways, if they would more persistently bear in mind the great difference in the conditions under which railways have been constructed in the Old and the New World. In England, for example, the railway came after the thick settlement of a district, and has naturally had to pay dearly for its privileges, and to submit to stringent conditions in regard to construction and maintenance. In the United States, on the other hand, the railways were often the first roads (hence railroad is the American name for them) in a new district, the inhabitants of which were glad to get them on almost any terms. Hence the cheap and provisional nature of many of the lines, and the numerous deadly level crossings. The land grants and other privileges accorded to the railway companies may be fairly compared to the road tax which we willingly submit to in England as the just price of an invaluable boon. This reflection, however, need not be carried so far as to cover with a mantle of justice all the railway concessions of America!

Two things in the American parlour-car system struck me as evils that were not only unnecessary, but easily avoidable. The first of these is that most illiberal regulation which compels the porter to let down the upper berth even when it is not occupied. The object of this is apparently to induce the occupant of the lower berth to hire the whole "section" of two berths, so as to have more ventilation and more room for dressing and undressing. Presumably the parlour-car companies know their own business best; but it would seem to the average "Britisher" that such a petty spirit of annoyance would be likely to do more harm than good, even in a financial way. The custom would be more excusable if it were confined to those cases in which two people shared the lower berth. The custom is so unlike the usual spirit of the United States, where the practice is to charge a liberal round sum and then relieve you of all minor annoyances and exactions, that its persistence is somewhat of a mystery.

The continuance of the other evil I allude to is still less comprehensible. The United States is proverbially the paradise of what it is, perhaps, now behind the times to term the gentler sex. The path of woman, old or new, in America is made smooth in all directions, and as a rule she has the best of the accommodation and the lion's share of the attention wherever she goes. But this is emphatically not the case on the parlour car. No attempt is made there to divide the sexes or to respect the privacy of a lady. If there are twelve men and four women on the car, the latter are not grouped by themselves, but are scattered among the men, either in lower or upper berths, as the number of their tickets or the courtesy of the men dictates. The lavatory and dressing-room for men at one end of the car has two or more "set bowls" (fixed in basins), and can be used by several dressers at once. The parallel accommodation for ladies barely holds one, and its door is provided with a lock, which enables a selfish bang-frizzler and rouge-layer to occupy it for an hour while a queue of her unhappy sisters remains outside. It is difficult to see why a small portion at one end of the car should not be reserved for ladies, and separated at night from the rest of the car by a curtain across the central aisle. Of course the passage of the railway officials could not be hindered, but the masculine passengers might very well be confined for the night to entrance and egress at their own end of the car. An improvement in the toilette accommodation for ladies also seems a not unreasonable demand.

Miss Catherine Bates, in her "Year in the Great Republic," narrates the case of a man who was nearly suffocated by the fact that a slight collision jarred the lid of the top berth in which he was sleeping and snapped it to! This story may be true; but in the only top berths which I know the occupant lies upon the lid, which, to close, would have to spring upwards against his weight!

A third nuisance, or combination of benefit and nuisance, or benefit with a very strong dash of avoidable nuisance, is the train boy. This young gentleman, whose age varies from fifteen to fifty, though usually nearer the former than the latter, is one of the most conspicuous of the embryo forms of the great American speculator or merchant. He occupies with his stock in trade a corner in the baggage car or end carriage of the train, and makes periodical rounds throughout the cars, offering his wares for sale. These are of the most various description, ranging from the daily papers and current periodicals through detective stories and tales of the Wild West, to chewing-gum, pencils, candy, bananas, skull-caps, fans, tobacco, and cigars. His pleasing way is to perambulate the cars, leaving samples of his wares on all the seats and afterwards calling for orders. He does this with supreme indifference to the occupation of the passenger. Thus, you settle yourself comfortably for a nap, and are just succumbing to the drowsy god, when you feel yourself "taken in the abdomen," not (fortunately) by "a chunk of old red sandstone," but by the latest number of the Illustrated American or Scribner's Monthly. The rounds are so frequent that the door of the car never seems to cease banging or the cold draughts to cease blowing in on your bald head. Mr. Phil Robinson makes the very sensible suggestion that the train boy should have a little printed list of his wares which he could distribute throughout the train, whereupon the traveller could send for him when wanted. Another suggestion that I venture to present to this independent young trader is that he should provide himself with copies of the novels treating of the districts which the railway traverses. Thus, when I tried to procure from him "Ramona" in California, or "The Prophet of the Great Smoky Mountains" in Tennessee, or "The Hoosier Schoolmaster" in Ohio, or "The Grandissimes" near New Orleans, the nearest he could come to my modest demand was "The Kreutzer Sonata" or the last effort of Miss Laura Jean Libbey, a popular American novelist, who describes in glowing colours how two aristocratic Englishmen, fighting a duel near London somewhere in the seventies, were interrupted by the heroine, who drove between them in a hansom and pair and received the shots in its panels! Out West, too, he could probably put more money in his pocket if he were disposed to put his pride there too. One pert youth in Arizona preferred to lose my order for cigars rather than bring the box to me for selection; he said "he'd be darned if he'd sling boxes around for me; I could come and choose for myself." However, when criticism has been exhausted it is an undeniable fact that the American Pullman cars are more comfortable and considerably cheaper than the so-called compartiments de luxe of European railways.

It is, perhaps, worth noting that the comfort of the engine-driver, or engineer as he is called lingua Americana, is much better catered for in the United States than in England. His cab is protected both overhead and at the sides, while his bull's-eye window permits him to look ahead without receiving the wind, dust, and snow in his eyes. The curious English conservatism which, apparently, believes that a driver will do his work better because exposed to almost the full violence of the elements always excites a very natural surprise in the American visitor to our shores.

The speed of American trains is as a rule slower than that of English ones, though there are some brilliant exceptions to this rule. I never remember dawdling along in so slow and apparently purposeless a manner as in crossing the arid deserts of Arizona—unless, indeed, it was in travelling by the Manchester and Milford line in Wales. The train on the branch between Raymond (a starting-point for the Yosemite) and the main line went so cannily that the engine-driver (an excellent marksman) shot rabbits from the engine, while the fireman jumped down, picked them up, and clambered on again at the end of the train. The only time the train had to be stopped for him was when the engineer had a successful right and left, the victims of which expired at some distance from each other. It should be said that there was absolutely no reason to hurry on this trip, as we had "lashins" of time to spare for our connection at the junction, and the passengers were all much interested in the sport.

At the other end of the scale are the trains which run from New York to Philadelphia (90 miles) in two hours, the train of the Reading Railway that makes the run of 55 miles from Camden to Atlantic City in 52 minutes, and the Empire State Express which runs from New York to Buffalo (436-1/2 miles) at the rate of over 50 miles an hour, including stops. These, however, are exceptional, and the traveller may find that trains known as the "Greased Lightning," "Cannon Ball," or "G-Whizz" do not exceed (if they even attain) 40 miles an hour. The possibility of speed on an American railway is shown by the record run of 436-1/2 miles in 6-3/4 hours, made on the New York Central Railroad in 1895 (= 64.22 miles per hour, exclusive of stops), and by the run of 148.8 miles in 137 minutes, made on the same railway in 1897. The longest unbroken runs of regular trains are one of 146 miles on the Chicago Limited train on the Pennsylvania route, and one of 143 miles by the New York Central Railway running up the Hudson to Albany. As experts will at once recognise, these are feats which compare well with anything done on this side of the Atlantic.

In the matter of accidents the comparison with Great Britain is not so overwhelmingly unfavourable as is sometimes supposed. If, indeed, we accept the figures given by Mullhall in his "Dictionary of Statistics," we have to admit that the proportion of accidents is five times greater in the United States than in the United Kingdom. The statistics collected by the Railroad Commissioners of Massachusetts, however, reduce this ratio to five to four. The safety of railway travelling differs hugely in different parts of the country. Thus Mr. E.B. Dorsey shows ("English and American Railways Compared") that the average number of miles a passenger can travel in Massachusetts without being killed is 503,568,188, while in the United Kingdom the number is only 172,965,362, leaving a very comfortable margin of over 300,000,000 miles. On the whole, however, it cannot be denied that there are more accidents in American railway travelling than in European, and very many of them from easily preventable causes. The whole spirit of the American continent in such matters is more "casual" than that of Europe; the American is more willing to "chance it;" the patriarchal regime is replaced by the every-man-for-himself-and-devil-take-the-hindmost system. When I hired a horse to ride up a somewhat giddy path to the top of a mountain, I was supplied (without warning) with a young animal that had just arrived from the breeding farm and had never even seen a mountain. Many and curious, when I regained my hotel, were the enquiries as to how he had behaved himself; and it was no thanks to them that I could report that, though rather frisky on the road, he had sobered down in the most sagacious manner when we struck the narrow upward trail. In America the railway passenger has to look out for himself. There is no checking of tickets before starting to obviate the risk of being in the wrong train. There is no porter to carry the traveller's hand-baggage and see him comfortably ensconced in the right carriage. When the train does start, it glides away silently without any warning bell, and it is easy for an inadvertent traveller to be left behind. Even in large and important stations there is often no clear demarcation between the platforms and the permanent way. The whole floor of the station is on one level, and the rails are flush with the spot from which you climb into the car. Overhead bridges or subways are practically unknown; and the arriving passenger has often to cross several lines of rails before reaching shore. The level crossing is, perhaps, inevitable at the present stage of railroad development in the United States, but its annual butcher's bill is so huge that one cannot help feeling it might be better safeguarded. Richard Grant White tells how he said to the station-master at a small wayside station in England, a propos of an overhead footbridge: "Ah, I suppose you had an accident through someone crossing the line, and then erected that?" "Oh, no," was the reply, "we don't wait for an accident." Mr. White makes the comment, "The trouble in America is that we do wait for the accident."

When I left England in September, 1888, we sailed down the Mersey on one of those absolutely perfect autumn days, the very memory of which is a continual joy. I remarked on the beauty of the weather to an American fellow-passenger. He replied, half in fun, "Yes, this is good enough for England; but wait till you see our American weather!" As luck would have it, it was raining heavily when we steamed up New York harbour, and the fog was so dense that we could not see the statue of Liberty Enlightening the World, though we passed close under it. The same American passenger had expatiated to me during the voyage on the merits of the American express service. "You have no trouble with porters and cabs, as in the Old World; you simply point out your trunks to an express agent, give him your address, take his receipt, and you will probably find your trunks at the house when you arrive." We reached New York on a Saturday; I confidently handed over my trunk to a representative of the Transfer Company about 9 A.M., hied to my friend's house in Brooklyn, and saw and heard nothing more of my trunk till Monday morning!

Such was the way in which two of my most cherished beliefs about America were dissipated almost before I set foot upon her free and sacred soil! It is, however, only fair to say that if I had assumed these experiences to be really characteristic, I should have made a grievous mistake. It is true that I afterwards experienced a good many stormy days in the United States, and found that the predominant weather in all parts of the country was, to judge from my apologetic hosts, the "exceptional;" but none the less I revelled in the bright blue, clear, sunny days with which America is so abundantly blessed, and came to sympathise very deeply with the depression that sometimes overtakes the American exile during his sojourn on our fog-bound coasts. So, too, I found the express system on the whole what our friend Artemus Ward calls "a sweet boon." Certainly it is as a rule necessary, in starting from a private house, to have one's luggage ready an hour or so before one starts one's self, and this is hardly so convenient as a hansom with you inside and your portmanteau on top; and it is also true that there is sometimes (especially in New York) a certain delay in the delivery of one's belongings. In nine cases out of ten, however, it was a great relief to get rid of the trouble of taking your luggage to or from the station, and feel yourself free to meet it at your own time and will. It was not often that I was reduced to such straits as on one occasion in Brooklyn, when, at the last moment, I had to charter a green-grocer's van and drive down to the station in it, triumphantly seated on my portmanteau.

The check system on the railway itself deserves almost unmitigated praise, and only needs to be understood to be appreciated. On arrival at the station the traveller hands over his impedimenta to the baggage master, who fastens a small metal disk, bearing the destination and a number, to each package, and gives the owner a duplicate check. The railway company then becomes responsible for the luggage, and holds it until reclaimed by presentation of the duplicate check. This system avoids on the one hand the chance of loss and trouble in claiming characteristic of the British system, and on the other the waste of time and expense of the Continental system of printed paper tickets. On arrival at his destination the traveller may hurry to his hotel without a moment's delay, after handing his check either to the hotel porter or to the so-called transfer agent, who usually passes through the train as it reaches an important station, undertaking the delivery of trunks and giving receipts in exchange for checks.

Besides the city express or transfer companies, the chief duty of which is to convey luggage from the traveller's residence to the railway station or vice versa, there are also the large general express companies or carriers, which send articles all over the United States. One of the most characteristic of these is the Adams Express Company, the widely known name of which has originated a popular conundrum with the query, "Why was Eve created?" This company began in 1840 with two men, a boy, and a wheelbarrow; now it employs 8,000 men and 2,000 wagons, and carries parcels over 25,000 miles of railway. The Wells, Fargo & Company Express operates over 40,000 miles of railway.

Coaching in America is, as a rule, anything but a pleasure. It is true that the chance of being held up by "road agents" is to-day practically non-existent, and that the spectacle of a crowd of yelling Apaches making a stage-coach the pin-cushion for their arrows is now to be seen nowhere but in Buffalo Bill's Wild West show. But the roads! No European who has done much driving in the United States can doubt for one moment that the required Man of the Hour is General Wade.[31] Even in the State of New York I have been in a stage that was temporarily checked by a hole two feet deep in the centre of the road, and that had to be emptied and held up while passing another part of the same road. In Virginia I drove over a road, leading to one of the most frequented resorts of the State, which it is simple truth to state offered worse going than any ordinary ploughed field. The wheels were often almost entirely submerged in liquid mud, and it is still a mystery to me how the tackle held together. To be jolted off one's seat so violently as to strike the top of the carriage was not a unique experience. Nor was the spending of ten hours in making thirty miles with four horses. In the Yellowstone one of the coaches of our party settled down in the midst of a slough of despond on the highway, from which it was finally extricated backwards by the combined efforts of twelve horses borrowed from the other coaches. Misery makes strange bedfellows, and the ingredients of a Christmas pudding are not more thoroughly shaken together or more inextricably mingled than stage-coach passengers in America are apt to be. The difficulties of the roads have developed the skill, courage, and readiness of the stage-coach men to an extraordinary degree, and I have never seen bolder or more dexterous driving than when California Bill or Colorado Jack rushed his team of four young horses down the breakneck slopes of these terrible highways. After one particularly hair-raising descent the driver condescended to explain that he was afraid to come down more slowly, lest the hind wheels should skid on the smooth rocky outcrop in the road and swing the vehicle sideways into the abyss. In coming out of the Yosemite, owing to some disturbance of the ordinary traffic arrangements our coach met the incoming stage at a part of the road so narrow that it seemed absolutely impossible for the two to pass each other. On the one side was a yawning precipice, on the other the mountain rose steeply from the roadside. The off-wheels of the incoming coach were tilted up on the hillside as far as they could be without an upset. In vain; our hubs still locked. We were then allowed to dismount. Our coach was backed down for fifty yards or so. Small heaps of stones were piled opposite the hubs of the stationary coach. Our driver whipped his horses to a gallop, ran his near-wheels over these stones so that their hubs were raised above those of the near-wheels of the other coach, and successfully made the dare-devil passage, in which he had not more than a couple of inches' margin to save him from precipitation into eternity. I hardly knew which to admire most—the ingenuity which thus made good in altitude what it lacked in latitude, or the phlegm with which the occupants of the other coach retained their seats throughout the entire episode.

The Englishman arriving in Boston, say in the middle of the lovely autumnal weather of November, will be surprised to find a host of workmen in the Common and Public Garden busily engaged in laying down miles of portable "plank paths" or "board walks," elevated three or four inches above the level of the ground. A little later, when the snowy season has well set in, he will discover the usefulness of these apparently superfluous planks; and he will hardly be astonished to learn that the whole of the Northern States are covered in winter with a network of similar paths. These gangways are made in sections and numbered, so that when they are withdrawn from their summer seclusion they can be laid down with great precision and expedition. No statistician, so far as I know, has calculated the total length of the plank paths of an American winter; but I have not the least doubt that they would reach from the earth to the moon, if not to one of the planets.

The river and lake steamboats of the United States are on the average distinctly better than any I am acquainted with elsewhere. The much-vaunted splendours of such Scottish boats as the "Iona" and "Columba" sink into insignificance when compared with the wonderful vessels of the line plying from New York to Fall River. These steamers deserve the name of floating hotel or palace much more than even the finest ocean-liner, because to their sumptuous appointments they add the fact that they are, except under very occasional circumstances, floating palaces and not reeling or tossing ones. The only hotel to which I can honestly compare the "Campania" is the one at San Francisco in which I experienced my first earthquake. But even the veriest landsman of them all can enjoy the passage of Long Island Sound in one of these stately and stable vessels, whether sitting indoors listening to the excellent band in one of the spacious drawing-rooms in which there is absolutely no rude reminder of the sea, or on deck on a cool summer night watching the lights of New York gradually vanish in the black wake, or the moon riding triumphantly as queen of the heavenly host, and the innumerable twinkling beacons that safeguard our course. And when he retires to his cabin, pleasantly wearied by the glamour of the night and soothed by the supple stability of his floating home, he will find his bed and his bedroom twice as large as he enjoyed on the Atlantic, and may let the breeze enter, undeterred by fear of intruding wave or breach of regulation. If he takes a meal on board he will find the viands as well cooked and as dexterously served as in a fashionable restaurant on shore; he may have, should he desire it, all the elbow-room of a separate table, and nothing will suggest to him the confined limits of the cook's galley or the rough-and-ready ways of marine cookery.

Little inferior to the Fall River boats are those which ascend the Hudson from New York to Albany, one of the finest river voyages in the world; and worthy to be compared with these are the Lake Superior steamers of the Canadian Pacific Railway. Among the special advantages of these last are the device by which meals are served in the fresh atmosphere of what is practically the upper deck, the excellent service of the neat lads who officiate as waiters and are said to be often college students turning an honest summer penny, and the frequent presence in the bill of fare of the Coregonus clupeiformis, or Lake Superior whitefish, one of the most toothsome morsels of the deep. Most of the other steamboat lines by which I travelled in the United States and Canada seemed to me as good as could be expected under the circumstances. There is, however, certainly room for improvement in some of the boats which ply on the St. Lawrence, and the Alaska service will probably grow steadily better with the growing rush of tourists.

Another wonderful instance of British conservatism is the way in which we have stuck to the horrors of our own ferry-boat system long after America has shown us the way to cross a ferry comfortably. It is true that the American steam ferry-boats are not so graceful as ours, looking as they do like Noah's arks or floating houses, and being propelled by the grotesque daddy-long-leg-like arrangement of the walking-beam engine. They are, however, far more suitable for their purpose. The steamer as originally developed was, I take it, intended for long (or at any rate longish) voyages, and was built as far as possible on the lines of a sailing-vessel. The conservative John Bull never thought of modifying this shape, even when he adopted the steamboat for ferries such as that across the Mersey from Liverpool to Birkenhead. He still retained the sea-going form, and passengers had either to remain on a lofty deck, exposed to the full fury of the elements, or dive down into the stuffy depths of an unattractive cabin. As soon, however, as Brother Jonathan's keen brain had to concern itself with the problem, he saw the topsy-turvyness of this arrangement. Hence in his ferry-boats there are no "underground" cabins, no exasperating flights of steps. We enter the ferry-house and wait comfortably under shelter till the boat approaches its "slip," which it does end on. The disembarking passengers depart by one passage, and as soon as they have all left the boat we enter by another. A roadway and two side-walks correspond to these divisions on the boat, which we enter on the level we are to retain for the passage. In the middle is the gangway for vehicles, to the right and left are the cabins for "ladies" and "gentlemen," each running almost the whole length of the boat. There is a small piece of open deck at each end, and those who wish may ascend to an upper deck. These long-drawn-out cabins are simply but suitably furnished with seats like those in a tramway-car or American railway-carriage. The boat retraces its course without turning round, as it is a "double-ender." On reaching the other side of the river we simply walk out of the boat as we should out of a house on the street-level. The tidal difficulty is met by making the landing-stage a floating one, and of such length that the angle it forms with terra firma is never inconvenient.

A Swiss friend of mine, whose ocean steamer landed him on the New Jersey shore of the North River, actually entered the cabin of the ferry-boat under the impression that it was a waiting-room on shore. The boat slipped away so quietly that he did not discover his mistake until he had reached the New York side of the river; and then there was no more astonished man on the whole continent!

The transition from travelling facilities to the telegraphic and postal services is natural. The telegraphs of the United States are not in the hands of the government, but are controlled by private companies, of which the Western Union, with its headquarters in New York, is facile princeps. This company possesses the largest telegraph system in the world, having 21,000 offices and 750,000 miles of wire. It also leases or uses seven Atlantic cables. In this, however, as in many other cases, size does not necessarily connote quality. My experiences may (like the weather) have been exceptional, and the attempt to judge of this Hercules by the foot I saw may be wide of the mark; but here are three instances which are at any rate suspicious:

I was living at Germantown, a suburb of Philadelphia, and left one day about 2 P.M. for the city, intending to return for dinner. On the way, however, I made up my mind to dine in town and go to the theatre, and immediately on my arrival at Broad-street station (about 2.15 P.M.) telegraphed back to this effect. When I reached the house again near midnight, I found the messenger with my telegram ringing the bell! Again, a friend of mine in Philadelphia sent a telegram to me one afternoon about a meeting in the evening; it reached me in Germantown, at a distance of about five miles, at 8 o'clock the following morning. Again, I left Salisbury (N.C.) one morning about 9 A.M. for Asheville, having previously telegraphed to the baggage-master at the latter place about a trunk of mine in his care. My train reached Asheville about 5 or 6 P.M. I went to the baggage-master, but found he had not received my wire. While I was talking to him, one of the train-men entered and handed it to him. It had, apparently, been sent by hand on the train by which I had travelled! This telegraphic giant may, of course, have accidentally and exceptionally put his wrong foot foremost on those occasions; but such are the facts.

The postal service also struck me as on the whole less prompt and accurate than that of Great Britain. The comparative infrequency of fully equipped post-offices is certainly an inconvenience. There are letter-boxes enough, and the commonest stamps may be procured in every drug-store (and of these there is no lack!) or even from the postmen; but to have a parcel weighed, to register a letter, to procure a money-order, or sometimes even to buy a foreign stamp or post-card, the New Yorker or Philadelphian has to go a distance which a Londoner or Glasgowegian would think distinctly excessive. It appears from an official table prepared in 1898 that about half the population of the United States live outside the free delivery service, and have to call at the post-office for their letters. On the other hand, the arrangements at the chief post-offices are very complete, and the subdivisions are numerous enough to prevent the tedious delays of the offices on the continent of Europe. The registration fee (eight cents) is double that of England. The convenient "special delivery stamp" (ten cents) entitles a letter to immediate delivery by special messenger. The tendency for the establishment of slight divergency in language between England and America is seen in the terms of the post-office as in those of the railway. A letter is "mailed," not "posted;" the "postman" gives way to the "letter-carrier;" a "post-card" is expanded into a "postal-card." The stranger on arrival at New York will be amused to see the confiding way in which newspaper or book packets, too large for the orifice, are placed on the top of the street letter-boxes (affixed to lamp-posts), and will doubtless be led to speculate on the different ways and instincts of the street Arabs of England and America. A second reflection will suggest to him the superior stability of the New York climate. On what day in England could we leave a postal packet of printed matter in the open air with any certainty that it would not be reduced to pulp in half an hour by a deluge of rain?

No remarks on the possible inferiority of the American telegraph and postal systems would be fair if unaccompanied by a tribute to the wonderful development of the use of the telephone. New York has (or had very recently) more than twice as many subscribers to the telephonic exchanges as London, and some American towns possess one telephone for every twenty inhabitants, while the ratio in the British metropolis is 1:3,000. In 1891 the United States contained 240,000 miles of telephone wires, used by over 200,000 regular subscribers. In 1895 the United Kingdom had about 100,000 miles of wire. The Metropolitan telephone in New York alone has 30,000 miles of subterranean wire and about 9,000 stations. The great switch-board at its headquarters is 250 feet long, and accommodates the lines of 6,000 subscribers. Some subscribers call for connection over a hundred times a day, and about one hundred and fifty girls are required to answer the calls.

The generalisations made in travellers' books about the hotels of America seem to me as fallacious as most of the generalisations about this chameleon among nations. Some of the American hotels I stayed at were about the best of their kind in the world, others about the worst, others again about half-way between these extremes. On the whole, I liked the so-called "American system" of an inclusive price by the day, covering everything except such purely voluntary extras as wine; and it seems to me that an ideal hotel on this system would leave very little to wish for. The large American way of looking at things makes a man prefer to give twenty shillings per day for all he needs and consumes rather than be bothered with a bill for sixteen to seventeen shillings, including such items (not disdained even by the swellest European hotels) as one penny for stationery or a shilling for lights. The weak points of the system as at present carried on are its needless expense owing to the wasteful profusion of the management, the tendency to have cast-iron rules for the hours within which a guest is permitted to be hungry, the refusal to make any allowance for absence from meals, and the general preference for quantity over quality. It is also a pity that baths are looked upon as a luxury of the rich and figure as an expensive extra; it is seldom that a hotel bath can be obtained for less than two shillings. There would seem, however, to be no reason why the continental table d'hote system should not be combined with the American plan. The bills of fare at present offered by large American hotels, with lists of fifty to one hundred different dishes to choose from, are simply silly, and mark, as compared with the table d'hote of, say, a good Parisian hotel, a barbaric failure to understand the kind of meal a lady or gentleman should want. To prepare five times the quantity that will be called for or consumed is to confess a lack of all artistic perception of the relations of means and end. The man who gloats over a list of fifty possible dishes is not at all the kind of customer who deserves encouragement. The service would also be improved if the waiters had not to carry in their heads the heterogeneous orders of six or eight people, each selecting a dozen different meats, vegetables, and condiments. The European or a la carte system is becoming more and more common in the larger cities, and many houses offer their patrons a choice of the two plans; but the fixed-price system is almost universal in the smaller towns and country districts. In houses on the American system the price generally varies according to the style of room selected; but most of the inconvenience of a bedchamber near the top of the house is obviated by the universal service of easy-running "elevators" or lifts. (By the way, the persistent manner in which the elevators are used on all occasions is often amusing. An American lady who has some twenty shallow steps to descend to the ground floor will rather wait patiently five minutes for the elevator than walk downstairs.)

Many of the large American hotels have defects similar to those with which we are familiar in their European prototypes. They have the same, if not an exaggerated, gorgeousness of bad taste, the same plethora of ostentatious "luxuries" that add nothing to the real comfort of the man of refinement, the same pier glasses in heavy gilt frames, the same marble consoles, the same heavy hangings and absurdly soft carpets. On the other hand, they are apt to lack some of the unobtrusive decencies of life, which so often mark the distinction between the modest home of a private gentleman and the palace of the travelling public. Indeed, it might truthfully be said that, on the whole, the passion for show is more rampant among American hotel-keepers than elsewhere. They are apt to be more anxious to have all the latest "improvements" and inventions than to ensure the smooth and easy running of what they already have. You will find a huge "teleseme" or indicator in your bedroom, on the rim of which are inscribed about one hundred different objects that a traveller may conceivably be supposed to want; but you may set the pointer in vain for your modest lemonade or wait half an hour before the waiter answers his complicated electric call. The service is sometimes very poor, even in the most pretentious establishments. On the other hand, I never saw better service in my life than that of the neat and refined white-clad maidens in the summer hotels of the White Mountains, who would take the orders of half-a-dozen persons for half a dozen different dishes each, and execute them without a mistake. It is said that many of these waitresses are college-girls or even school-mistresses, and certainly their ladylike appearance and demeanour and the intelligent look behind their not infrequent spectacles would support the assertion. It gave one a positive thrill to see the margin of one's soup-plate embraced by a delicate little pink-and-white thumb that might have belonged to Hebe herself, instead of the rawly red or clumsily gloved intruder that we are all too familiar with. The waiting of the coloured gentleman is also pleasant in its way to all who do not demand the episcopal bearing of the best English butler. The smiling darkey takes a personal interest in your comfort, may possibly enquire whether you have dined to your liking, is indefatigable in ministering to your wants, slides and shuffles around with a never-failing bonhomie, does everything with a characteristic flourish, and in his neat little white jacket often presents a most refreshing cleanliness of aspect as compared with the greasy second-hand dress coats of the European waiter.

As a matter of fact, so much latitude is usually allowed for each meal (breakfast from 8 to 11, dinner from 12 to 8, and so on) that it is seldom really difficult to get something to eat at an American hotel when one is hungry. At some hotels, however, the rules are very strict, and nothing is served out of meal hours. At Newport I came in one Sunday evening about 8 o'clock, and found that supper was over. The manager actually allowed me to leave his hotel at once (which I did) rather than give me anything to eat. The case is still more absurd when one arrives by train, having had no chance of a square meal all day, and is coolly expected to go to bed hungry! The genuine democrat, however, may take what comfort he can from the thought that this state of affairs is due to the independence of the American servants, who have their regular hours and refuse to work beyond them.

The lack of smoking-rooms is a distinct weak point in American hotels. One may smoke in the large public office, often crowded with loungers not resident in the hotel, or may retire with his cigar to the bar-room; but there is no pleasant little snuggery provided with arm-chairs and smokers' tables, where friends may sit in pleasant, nicotine-wreathed chat, ringing, when they want it, for a whiskey-and-soda or a cup of coffee.

American hotels, even when otherwise good, are apt to be noisier than European ones. The servants have little idea of silence over their work, and the early morning chambermaids crow to one another in a way that is very destructive of one's matutinal slumbers. Then somebody or other seems to crave ice-water at every hour of the day or night, and the tinkle, tinkle, tinkle of the ice-pitcher in the corridors becomes positively nauseous when one wants to go to sleep. The innumerable electric bells, always more or less on the go, are another auditory nuisance.

While we are on the question of defects in American hotels, it should be noticed that the comfortable little second-class inns of Great Britain are practically unknown in the United States. The second-class inns there are run on the same lines as the best ones; but in an inferior manner at every point. The food is usually as abundant, but it is of poorer quality and worse cooked; the beds are good enough, but not so clean; the table linen is soiled; the sugar bowls are left exposed to the flies from week-end to week-end; the service is poor and apt to be forward; and (last, but not least) the manners of the other guests are apt to include a most superfluous proportion of tobacco-chewing, expectorating, an open and unashamed use of the toothpick, and other little amenities that probably inflict more torture on those who are not used to them than would decorous breaches of the Decalogue.

In criticising American hotels, it must not be forgotten that the rapid process of change that is so characteristic of America operates in this sphere with especial force. This is at work a distinct tendency to substitute the subdued for the gaudy, the refined for the meretricious, the quiet for the loud; and even now the cultured American who knows his monde may spend a great part of his time in hotels without conspicuously lowering the tone of his environment.

The prevalent idea that the American hotel clerk is a mannerless despot is, me judice, rather too severe. He is certainly apt to be rather curt in his replies and ungenial in his manner; but this is not to be wondered at when one reflects under what a fire of questions he stands all day long and from week to week; and, besides, he does generally give the information that is wanted. That he should wear diamond studs and dress gorgeously is not unnatural when one considers the social stratum from which he is drawn. Do not our very cooks the same as far as they can? That he should somewhat magnify the importance of his office is likewise explicable; and, after all, how many human beings have greater power over the actual personal comforts of the fraction of the world they come into contact with? I can, however, truthfully boast that I met hotel clerks who, in moments of relief from pressure, treated me almost as an equal, and one or two who seemed actually disposed to look on me as a friend. I certainly never encountered any actual rudeness from the American hotel clerk such as I have experienced from the pert young ladies who sometimes fill his place in England; and in the less frequented resorts he sometimes took a good deal of trouble to put the stranger in the way to do his business speedily and comfortably. His omniscience is great, but not so phenomenal as I expected; I posed him more than once with questions about his abode which, it seemed to me, every intelligent citizen should have been able to answer easily. In his most characteristic development the American hotel clerk is an urbane living encyclopaedia, as passionless as the gods, as unbiassed as the multiplication table, and as tireless as a Corliss engine.

Traveller's tales as to the system of "tipping" in American hotels differ widely. The truth is probably as far from the indignant Briton's assertion, based probably upon one flagrant instance in New York, that "it is ten times worse than in England and tantamount to robbery with violence," as from the patriotic American's assurance that "The thing, sir, is absolutely unknown in our free and enlightened country; no American citizen would demean himself to accept a gratuity." To judge from my own experience, I should say that the practice was quite as common in such cities as Boston, New York, and Philadelphia as in Europe, and more onerous because the amounts expected are larger. A dollar goes no farther than a shilling. Moreover, the gratuity is usually given in the form of "refreshers" from day to day, so that the vengeance of the disappointed is less easily evaded. Miss Bates, a very friendly writer on America, reports various unpleasantnesses that she received from untipped waiters, and tells of an American who found that his gratuities for two months at a Long Branch hotel (for three persons and their horses) amounted to L40. In certain other walks of life the habit of tipping is carried to more extremes in New York than in any European city I know of. Thus the charge for a shave (already sufficiently high) is 7-1/2d., but the operator expects 2-1/2d. more for himself. One barber with whom I talked on the subject openly avowed that he considered himself wronged if he did not get his fee, and recounted the various devices he and his fellows practised to extract gratuities from the unwilling. As one goes West or South the system of tipping seems to fall more and more into abeyance, though it will always be found a useful smoother of the way. In California, so far as I could judge, it was almost entirely unknown, and the Californian hotels are among the best in the Union.

Among the lessons which English and other European hotels might learn from American hotels may be named the following:

1. The combination of the present a la carte system with the inclusive or American system, by which those who don't want the trouble of ordering their repasts may be sure of finding meals, with a reasonable latitude of choice in time and fare, ready when desired. It is a sensible comfort to know beforehand exactly, or almost exactly, what one's hotel expenses will amount to.

2. The abolition of the charge for attendance.

3. A greater variety of dishes than is usually offered in any except our very largest hotels. This is especially to be desired at breakfast. Without going to the American extreme of fifty or a hundred dishes to choose from, some intermediate point short of the Scylla of sole and the Charybdis of ham and eggs might surely be found. There is probably more pig-headed conservatism than justified fear of expense in the reluctance to follow this most excellent "American lead." The British tourist in the United States takes so kindly to the preliminary fruit and cereal dishes of America that he would probably show no objection to them on his native heath.

4. An extension of the system of ringing once for the boots, twice for the chambermaid, and so on. The ordinary American table of calls goes up to nine.

5. The provision of writing materials free for the guests of the hotels. The charge for stationery is one of the pettiest and most exasperating cheese-parings of the English Boniface's system of account-keeping. If, however, he imitates the liberality of his American brother, it is to be hoped that he will "go him one better" in the matter of blotting-paper. Nothing in the youthful country across the seas has a more venerable appearance than the strips of blotting-paper supplied in the writing-rooms of its hotels.

Nothing in its way could be more inviting or seem more appropriate than the cool and airy architecture of the summer hotels in such districts as the White Mountains, with their wide and shady verandas, their overhanging eaves, their balconies, their spacious corridors and vestibules, their simple yet tasteful wood-panelling, their creepers outside and their growing plants within. Mr. Howells has somewhere reversed the threadbare comparison of an Atlantic liner to a floating hotel, by likening a hostelry of this kind to a saloon steamer; and indeed the comparison is an apt one, so light and buoyant does the construction seem, with its gaily painted wooden sides, its glass-covered veranda decks, and its streaming flags. Perhaps the nearest analogue that we have to the life of an American summer hotel is seen in our large hydropathic establishments, such as those at Peebles or Crieff, where the therapeutic appliances play but a subdued obbligato to the daily round of amusements. The same spirit of camaraderie generally rules at both; both have the same regular meal-hours, at which almost as little drinking is seen at the one as the other; both have their evening entertainments got up (gotten up, our American cousins say, with a delightfully old fashioned flavour) by the enterprise of the most active guests. The hydropathists have to go to bed a little sooner, and must walk to the neighbouring village if they wish a bar-room; but on the whole their scheme of life is much the same. Whether it is due to the American temperament or the American weather, the palm for brightness, vivacity, variety, and picturesqueness must be adjudged to the hotel. For those who are young enough to "stand the racket," no form of social gaiety can he found more amusing than a short sojourn at a popular summer hotel among the mountains or by the sea, with its constant round of drives, rides, tennis and golf matches, picnics, "germans," bathing, boating, and loafing, all permeated by flirtation of the most audacious and innocent description. The focus of the whole carnival is found in the "piazza" or veranda, and no prettier sight in its way can be imagined than the groups and rows of "rockers" and wicker chairs, each occupied by a lithe young girl in a summer frock, or her athletic admirer in his tennis flannels.

The enormous extent of the summer exodus to the mountains and the seas in America is overwhelming; and a population of sixty-five millions does not seem a bit too much to account for it. I used to think that about all the Americans who could afford to travel came to Europe. But the American tourists in Europe are, after all, but a drop in the bucket compared with the oceans of summer and winter visitors to the Adirondacks and Florida, Manitoba Springs and the coast of Maine, the Catskills and Long Branch, Newport and Lenox, Bar Harbor and California, White Sulphur Springs and the Minnesota Lakes, Saratoga and Richfield, The Thousand Isles and Martha's Vineyard, Niagara and Trenton Falls, Old Point Comfort and Asheville, the Yellowstone and the Yosemite, Alaska and the Hot Springs of Arkansas. And everywhere that the season's visitor is expected he will find hotels awaiting him that range all the way from reasonable comfort to outrageous magnificence; while a simpler taste will find a plain boarding-house by almost every mountain pool or practicable beach in the whole wide expanse of the United States. The Briton may not have yet abdicated his post as the champion traveller or explorer of unknown lands, but the American is certainly the most restless mover from one resort of civilisation to another.

Perhaps the most beautiful hotel in the world is the Ponce de Leon at St. Augustine, Florida, named after the Spanish voyager who discovered the flowery[32] State in 1512, and explored its streams on his romantic search for the fountain of eternal youth. And when I say beautiful I use the word in no auctioneering sense of mere size, and height, and evidence of expenditure, but as meaning a truly artistic creation, fine in itself and appropriate to its environment. The hotel is built of "coquina," or shell concrete, in a Spanish renaissance style with Moorish features, which harmonises admirably with the sunny sky of Florida and the historic associations of St. Augustine. Its colour scheme, with the creamy white of the concrete, the overhanging roofs of red tile, and the brick and terra-cotta details, is very effective, and contrasts well with the deep-blue overhead and the luxuriant verdancy of the orange-trees, magnolias, palmettos, oleanders, bananas, and date-palms that surround it. The building encloses a large open court, and is lined by columned verandas, while the minaret-like towers dominate the expanse of dark-red roof. The interior is richly adorned with wall and ceiling paintings of historical or allegorical import, skilfully avoiding crudity or garishness; and the marble and oak decorations of the four-galleried rotunda are worthy of the rest of the structure. The general effect is one of luxurious and artistic ease, with suggestions of an Oriental dolce far niente in excellent keeping with the idea of the winter idler's home. The Ponce de Leon and the adjoining and more or less similar structures of the Alcazar, the Cordova, and the Villa Zorayda form indeed an architectural group which, taken along with the semi-tropical vegetation and atmosphere, alone repays a long journey to see. But let the strictly economical traveller take up his quarters in one of the more modest hostelries of the little town, unless he is willing to pay dearly (and yet not perhaps too dearly) for the privilege of living in the most artistic hotel in the world.

It is a long cry from Florida to California, where stands another hotel which suggests mention for its almost unique perfections. The little town of Monterey, with its balmy air, its beautiful sandy beach, its adobe buildings, and its charming surroundings, is, like St. Augustine, full of interesting Spanish associations, dating back to 1602. The Hotel del Monte, or "Hotel of the Forest," one of the most comfortable, best-kept, and moderate-priced hotels of America, lies amid bluegrass lawns and exquisite grounds, in some ways recalling the parks of England's gentry, though including among its noble trees such un-English specimens as the sprawling and moss-draped live-oaks and the curious Monterey pines and cypresses. Its gardens offer a continual feast of colour, with their solid acres of roses, violets, calla lilies, heliotrope, narcissus, tulips, and crocuses; and one part of them, known as "Arizona," contains a wonderful collection of cacti. The hotel itself has no pretension to rival the Ponce de Leon in its architecture or appointments, and is, I think, built of wood. It is, however, very large, encloses a spacious garden-court, and makes a pleasant enough impression, with its turrets, balconies, and verandas, its many sharp gables, dormers, and window-hoods. The economy of the interior reminded me more strongly of the amenities and decencies of the house of a refined, well-to-do, and yet not extravagantly wealthy family than of the usual hotel atmosphere. There were none of the blue satin hangings, ormolu vases, and other entirely superfluous luxuries for which we have to pay in the bills of certain hotels at Paris and elsewhere; but on the other hand nothing was lacking that a fastidious but reasonable taste could demand. The rooms and corridors are spacious and airy; everything was as clean and fresh as white paint and floor polish could make them; the beds were comfortable and fragrant; the linen was spotless; there was lots of "hanging room;" each pair of bedrooms shared a bathroom; the cuisine was good and sufficiently varied; the waiters were attentive; flowers were abundant without and within. The price of all this real luxury was $3 to $3.50 (12s. to 14s.) a day. Possibly the absolute perfection of the bright and soft Californian spring when I visited Monterey, and the exquisite beauty of its environment, may have lulled my critical faculties into a state of unusual somnolence; but when I quitted the Del Monte Hotel I felt that I was leaving one of the most charming homes I had ever had the good fortune to live in.

The only hotel that to my mind contests with the Del Monte the position of the best hotel in the North American continent is the Canadian Pacific Hotel at Banff, in the National Rocky Mountains Park of Canada. Here also magnificent scenery, splendid weather, and moderate charges combined to bias my judgment; but the residuum, after all due allowance made for these factors, still, after five years, assures me of most unusual excellence. Two things in particular I remember in connection with this hotel. The one is the almost absolute perfection of the waiting, carried on by gentlemanly youths of about eighteen or twenty, who must, I think, have formed the corps d'elite of the thousands of waiters in the service of the Canadian Pacific Railway. The marvellous speed and dexterity with which they ministered to my wants, the absolutely neat and even dainty manner in which everything was done by them, and their modest readiness to make suggestions and help one's choice (always to the point!) make one of the pleasantest pictures of hotel life lurking in my memory. The other dominant recollection of the Banff Hotel is the wonderfully beautiful view from the summer-house at its northeast corner. Just below the bold bluff on which this hotel stands the piercingly blue Bow River throws itself down in a string of foaming white cataracts to mate with the amber and rapid-rushing Spray. The level valley through which the united and now placid stream flows is carpeted with the vivid-red painter's brush, white and yellow marguerites, asters, fireweed, golden-rod, and blue-bells; to the left rise the perpendicular cliffs of Tunnel Mountain, while to the right Mt. Rundle lifts its weirdly sloping, snow-flecked peaks into the azure.

In the dense green woods of the Adirondacks, five miles from the nearest high road on the one side and on the other lapped by an ocean of virgin forest which to the novice seems almost as pathless as the realms of Neptune, stands the Adirondack Lodge, probably one of the most quaint, picturesque little hotels in the world. It is tastefully built in the style of a rustic log-hut, its timber being merely rough-hewn by the axe and not reduced to monotonous symmetry by the saw-mill. It is roofed with bark, and its wide-eaved verandas are borne by tree-trunks with the bark still on. The same idea is carried out in the internal equipment, and the bark is left intact on much of the furniture. The wood retains its natural colours, and there are no carpets or paint. This charming little hotel is due to the taste or whim of a New York electrical engineer (the inventor, I believe, of the well-known "ticker"), who acts the landlord in such a way as to make the sixty or seventy inmates feel like the guests of a private host. The clerk is a medical student, the very bell-boy ("Eddy") a candidate for Harvard, and both mix on equal terms with the genial circle that collects round the bonfire lighted in front of the house every summer's evening. As one lazily lay there, watching the wavering play of the ruddy blaze on the dark-green pines, listening to the educated chatter of the boy who cleaned the boots, realising that a deer, a bear, or perchance even a catamount might possibly be lurking in the dark woods around, and knowing that all the material comforts of civilised life awaited one inside the house, one felt very keenly the genuine Americanism of this Arcadia, and thought how hard it would be to reproduce the effect even in the imagination of the European.

It was in this same Adirondack Wilderness that I stayed in the only hotel that, so far as I know, caught on to the fact that I was a "chiel amang them takin' notes" for a guidebook. With true American enterprise I was informed, when I called for my bill, that that was all right; and I still recall with amusement the incredulous and obstinate resistance of the clerk to my insistence on paying my way. I hope that the genial proprietors do not attribute the asterisk that I gave the hotel to their well-meant efforts to give me quid pro quo, but credit me with a totally unbiassed admiration for their good management and comfortable quarters.

Mention has already been made (p. 30) of a hotel at a frequented watering-place, at which the lowest purchasable quantity of sleep cost one pound sterling. It is, perhaps, superfluous to say that the rest procured at this cost was certainly not four or five times better than that easily procurable for four or five shillings; and that the luxury of this hotel appealed, not in its taste perhaps, but certainly in its effect, to the shoddy rather than to the refined demands of the traveller. Shenstone certainly never associated the ease of his inn with any such hyperbolical sumptuousness as this; and it probably could not arise in any community that did not include a large class of individuals with literally more money than they knew what to do with, and desirous of any means of indicating their powers of expenditure. It has been said of another hotel at Bar Harbor that "Anyone can stay there who is worth two millions of dollars, or can produce a certificate from the Recorder of New York that he is a direct descendant of Hendrik Hudson or Diedrich Knickerbocker."

Many other American hotels suggest themselves to me as sufficiently individual in character to discriminate them from the ruck. Such are the Hygieia at Old Point Comfort, with its Southern guests in summer and its Northern guests in winter; looking out from its carefully enclosed and glazed piazzas over the waste of Hampton Roads, where the "Merrimac" wrought devastation to the vessels of the Union until itself vanquished by the turret-ship "Monitor;" the enormous caravansaries of Saratoga, one of which alone accommodates two thousand visitors, or the population of a small town, while the three largest have together room for five thousand people; the hotel at the White Sulphur Springs of Virginia, for nearly a century the typical resort of the wealth and aristocracy of the South, and still furnishing the eligible stranger with a most attractive picture of Southern beauty, grace, warm-heartedness, and manners; the Stockbridge Inn in the Berkshire Hills, long a striking exception to the statement that no country inns of the best English type can be found in the United States, but unfortunately burned down a year or two ago; the Catskill Mountain House, situated on an escarpment rising so abruptly from the plain of the Hudson that the view from it has almost the same effect as if we were leaning out of the car of a balloon or over the battlements of a castle two thousand feet high; the colossal Auditorium of Chicago, with its banquet hall and kitchen on the tenth floor; and the Palace Hotel of San Francisco, with its twelve hundred beds and its covered and resonant central court. Enough has, however, been said to show that all American hotels are not the immense and featureless barracks that many Europeans believe, but that they also run through a full gamut of variety and character.

The restaurant is by no means such an institution in the United States as in the continental part of Europe; in this matter the American habit is more on all fours with English usage. The cafe of Europe is, perhaps, best represented by the piazza. Of course there are numerous restaurants in all the larger cities; but elsewhere the traveller will do well to stick to the meals at his hotel. The best restaurants are often in the hands of Germans, Italians, or Frenchmen. This is conspicuously so at New York. Delmonico's has a worldwide reputation, and is undoubtedly a good restaurant; but it may well be questioned whether the New York estimate of its merits is not somewhat excessive. If price be the criterion, it has certainly few superiors. The a la carte restaurants are, indeed, all apt to be expensive for the single traveller, who will find that he can easily spend eight to twelve shillings on a by no means sumptuous meal. The French system of supplying one portion for two persons or two portions for three is, however, in vogue, and this diminishes the cost materially. The table d'hote restaurants, on the other hand, often give excellent value for their charges. The Italians have especially devoted themselves to this form of the art, and in New York and Boston furnish one with a very fair dinner indeed, including a flask of drinkable Chianti, for four or five shillings. At some of the simple German restaurants one gets excellent German fare and beer, but these are seldom available for ladies. The fair sex, however, takes care to be provided with more elegant establishments for its own use, to which it sometimes admits its husbands and brothers. The sign of a large restaurant in New York reads: "Women's Cooeperative Restaurant; tables reserved for gentlemen," in which I knew not whether more to admire the uncompromising antithesis between the plain word "women" and the complimentary term "gentlemen" or the considerateness that supplies separate accommodation for the shrinking creatures denoted by the latter. Perhaps this is as good a place as any to note that it is usually as unwise to patronise a restaurant which professedly caters for "gents" as to buy one's leg-coverings of a tailor who knows them only as "pants." Probably the "adult gents' bible-class," which Professor Freeman encountered, was equally unsatisfactory.